Concerning that resumption of service!

MONDAY, MAY 2, 2022

For now, try this instead:  Over the weekend, we said that we would be resuming normal services today.

We're going to delay a bit more. Last week, we underwent what some would describe as a "medical procedure," and we're still getting our energy back. 

Believe it or not, it has taken a lot of mental energy to churn out your incomparable DAILY HOWLER over the past twenty-four (!) years. We hope you can wait another day or two for resumption of normal services.

For now, try this instead:

The New York Times has offered a pair of (lengthy) front-page reports about Tucker Carlson's life and career, focusing on his recent work at Fox. We have a lot of reactions to those reports, but for now, here are the links:

AMERICAN NATIONALIST: PART 1
How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable

AMERICAN NATIONALIST: PART 2
How Tucker Carlson Reshaped Fox News—and Became Trump’s Heir

Part 1 appeared on the font page of Sunday's print editions. Part 2 appears on the front page of today's print editions.  

(Ignore the still-uncorrected bungle at the newspaper's "Today's Paper" site, where the Times mistakenly posted Part 2 on both Sunday and Monday, without posting Part 1 at all.  A day and a half have gone by since Sunday's bungle; the Times still hasn't noticed or corrected the error. People who read the Times through use of the "Today's Paper" site may well be very confused.)

We've had many reactions to the reports about Carlson's routinely disordered work at Fox. For our money, the most salient new report we've seen is the book review which appeared beneath this headline in Sunday's Washington Post:

OUTLOOK / Review
What can stop a diverse democracy from tearing itself apart?

 Lee Drutman penned the review of Yascha Mounk's new book. “The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure.” 

"What can stop a diverse democracy from tearing itself apart?"  It seems to us that this is the key question our struggling democracy currently faces.

Carlson's routine journalistic misconduct makes this problem much harder to solve for our struggling nation. In our view, so does a great deal of the behavior which now emerges from our own, self-assured blue tribe.

We want to return to those basic points. Energy, don't fail us now!

We're happy to be back on our sprawling campus. Experts all say that the die has been cast, but we're eager to continue to serve.


35 comments:

  1. We wish you best of health, dear Bob. And best of health to Tucker Carlson, undeniably the best talking head in the establishment media.

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  2. This ugly series of smear articles tells us more about the N. Y. Times than about Tucker Carlson. Casual accusations of racism, without real evidence, are malicious and stupid. False charges of racism have been overused for a long time. They now convince fewer and fewer people.

    P.S. Reminds me of similar racism charges against Rush Limbaugh, a man who chose to work with a black sidekick for many years and chose to have his marriage officiated by black judge.

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    1. "...tells us more about the N. Y. Times than..."

      Tsk. Well, we suppose these days the new federal disinformation department tells them what to write.

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    2. Rush should have been against voter suppression of black voters, if he wanted the credit for not being a bigot.

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    3. Republican judge, Clarence Thomas, once wanted a black person on the Supreme Court so bad, he lied under oath to make it happen.

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    4. David,
      Some have even accused Republicans of being "bigots" just for taking women's right to choose away.

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    5. Poor Carlson, being “smeared.” What they should really focus on is “Carlson's routine journalistic misconduct.” You won’t find anything about that at this blog, though.

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    6. mh -- the loss is not Carlson's; he gains viewers from the Times's attacks.

      The loss is yours and mine. We can no longer rely on the New York Times for accurate, unbiased news.

      P.S. I don't watch Carlson, but I am willing to believe that he commits routine journalistic misconduct. That seems to be how to get viewers in this partisan, tribalistic age.

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    7. What makes you think Confessore’s articles are “smears?” Granted, they don’t show Carlson exhibiting any email management issues, but they are evidence-based reports on an important and influential and pernicious on-air blabbermouth who commits routine journalistic malpractice.

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    8. David -- you also forgot to mention that Rush travelled to the Dominican Republic to have a stag party with black girls (probably underage). If that doesn't scream that he's an emancipated man, free of racial animus, I don't know what does.

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    9. mh -- I read a bit of the first article, which called Carlson a racist without any real evidence.
      1. it says Carlson's criticism of illegal immigration "stoked white fear." Actually, illegal immigration hurts blacks more than whites. I have read that Biden's growing unpopularity among Hispanic Americans is substantially due to his support for illegal immigration.

      2. "Mr. Carlson dismissed those protesting the [George Floyd] killing as “criminal mobs.” That's spin. Carlson called mobs of illegally rioters "criminal mobs", which they were. BTW these mobs did a lot of harm to black neighborhoods -- probably more than to white or Asian neighborhoods.

      3. "Mr. Carlson has become the most visible and voluble defender of those who violently stormed the U.S. Capitol to keep Donald J. Trump in office, playing down the presence of white nationalists in the crowd and claiming the attack “barely rates as a footnote.” Whatever one thinks of the 1/6 rioters, they were not dealing with race. It's silly to equate support for the 1/6 demonstrators and rioters as "racism."

      4. "At a moment when white backlash is the jet fuel of a Republican Party striving to return to power in Washington,..." NO. the jet fuel is Biden's mis-governance, which, Republicans say, led to Americans and loyal Afghans abandoned, bad inflation, runaway illegal immigration, and rising crime rates. BTW, Republicans are gaining popularity among Hispanics and blacks. This trend contradicts the Times's contention that Republicans are gaining popularity via white backlash.

      mh -- this is as far as I've gotten. I suspect that the rest of the series may be as feebly argued as this part, but it seems a waste of time to critique it all, It's like shooting fish in a barrel.

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    10. You don't know what you're talking about, David.

      Translated from Lib, 'racist' means, in English, 'decent fella'. It's a compliment. If libs don't call you 'racist' -- or even if they don't call you 'racist' often enough -- then you know you're doing something wrong.

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    11. David,
      The idea that there is a Republican voter who gives a shit about inflation, might be the stupidest thing you've ever tried to gaslight TDH readers about.
      You KNOW, as well as I and the mainstream media do, that Republican voters care only about bigotry and white supremacy. It's bee that way since at least Reagan.

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    12. Dear David,
      Are you fucking kidding me? The entire thing about the 1/6 insurrection is that Republicans didn't think it was fair that urban voters (black people) in Atlanta, Philly, Pittsburgh, and Phoenix had their votes count in the Presidential election.
      What exactly did Tucker tell you to pretend it was about?

      Dear Bob,
      We need better trolls than David in Cal on this site. The current trolls are far too lazy to even try to make a decent argument.

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    13. The 1/6 rioters are going to so pissed-off when they find out their temper tantrum has only led to Republican politicians at the state level making it harder for minorities to vote, and not something that will address their concerns they haven't been able to explain in almost 16 months.
      LO Fucking L.

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    14. Anyone who isn't a bigot, or isn't perfectly fine with bigotry, left the Republican Party more than two decades ago.

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    15. David,
      What's a "legal rioter"? A white protester?

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    16. What's a "legal rioter"? A white protester?

      @11:29 Are you aware that many white 1/6 rioters were arrested and some were denied bail?

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    17. @11:16 See

      It's Not Just Hispanics. The Democrats Are Losing the Black Vote

      in Newsweek
      https://www.newsweek.com/its-not-just-hispanics-democrats-are-losing-black-vote-opinion-1702581

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    18. David,
      So what's a "legal rioter"?
      Do I have to wait for Tucker to tell you?

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    19. Re: Newsweek
      Republicans will have a much more difficult time deciding which black votes to suppress.
      This why they are setting up for Republican-led state legislatures, and not voters, to make the call of who wins elections.

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    20. Don't be coy, David. What did Tucker tell you the 1/6 rioters were going on about?

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    21. Susan Collins not beginning impeachment proceedings for Kavanugh and Gorsuch for lying under oath at their SCOTUS hearings in 3...2...1...

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  3. Hope you're doing well Mr. Somerby, and wish you a speedy recovery from whatever it was.

    Leroy

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    Replies
    1. The "Right-wing Grievance of the Day" website had some technical issues. Looks like it might be fixed now.

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  4. "where the Times mistakenly posted Part 2 on both Sunday and Monday, without posting Part 1 at all"

    This mistake may have appeared on the Today's Paper app, but Part 1 was posted at nytimes.com on April 30th, which is Saturday, not Sunday. Both parts appear today at the proper links, midway down the page on nytimes.com. It says that Part 2 was originally posted on April 30th too, then updated on May 1, which is Sunday. This updating may have created some confusion in Somerby's mind.

    Today's paper shows only Part 2 today. I assume it expects you to keep up with the news and it cannot keep repeating all of the content without defeating its purpose of digesting the main news for those who are short on time.

    Why is Somerby using this app instead of reading the actual paper? It undercuts his ability to make meaningful criticisms.

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  5. ""What can stop a diverse democracy from tearing itself apart?" It seems to us that this is the key question our struggling democracy currently faces."

    It is wrong to blame our current problems on diversity. There are white men and women in both parties and they hold very different opinions, values and goals. For those people, who are still the majority in the USA, diversity is not what is tearing us apart, any more than diversity was to blame for the conflict between white abolitionists and white slaveowners in the 1860s.

    Blaming this on diversity makes it appear that those who are diverse are to blame, and that a solution is to reduce or suppress or otherwise hide the diverse people. Democracy has built-in methods of resolving differences of opinion. Today, the problem is that people on the right are bending rules and ignoring the law in order to manipulate our system because they do not wish to compromise. It remains to be seen whether our democracy can withstand lawlessness and a lack of commitment to democratic process. But that is a far different problem than diversity itself.

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  6. "Carlson's routine journalistic misconduct makes this problem much harder to solve for our struggling nation. In our view, so does a great deal of the behavior which now emerges from our own, self-assured blue tribe."

    Bothsiderism, thy name is Somerby! Carlson engages in journalistic misconduct. The NY Times (which is not liberal) makes a mistake linking to an article in its app (not on the paper itself). Do these seem equivalent to you? They don't to me. Meanwhile, Somerby has pointed to no journalistic misconduct by the so-called blue tribe.

    I realize Somerby is just home from the hospital, but he didn't make this case before either. And it isn't fair to continually malign liberals without providing any evidence that they deserve it.

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  7. Don't say you are going to post on a specific day and then not post.

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  8. "Tucker Carlson that U.S. aid to help Ukraine defend against Russia’s barbaric invasion is revenge for Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the 2016 presidential election, the HuffPost reports.

    Said Carlson: “We don’t arm Ukraine so we can help the Ukrainians. They are merely unfortunate pawns in all of this. We arm Ukraine so that we can punish Russia. Why? For stealing Hillary Clinton’s coronation.”

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  9. Bob,
    Welcome back. We missed hearing the white grievance of the day while you were gone.

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  10. https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/05/glenn-greenwald-is-extremely-concerned-that-women-journalists-may-not-be-earning-their-money

    From this, it sounds like Somerby and Glen Greenwald may have similar opinions, which Paul Campos labels misogyny -- so I am not the only one who thinks this.

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    Replies
    1. There's no such thing as 'misogyny', dear dembot, because no one -- not even the super-duper dembot genius -- knows who the wimmin are...

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    2. If criticizing a single woman, Molly Jong-Fast, is misogyny, then is it misogyny to criticize Sarah Palin? Is it racism to criticize a single black person such as Justice Thomas?

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    3. Is suppressing the vote of Clarence Thomas really "racism"?

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